Paris and kept them shut until he knew the certain victor, fully intending
to arrest Napoleon and Sieyes for treason if the coup miscarried. Lucien
Bonaparte, however, usually a thorn in his brother's side, acquitted
himself splendidly on 19 Brumaire, assured the success of the plot, and
wrapped a cloak of legality around a barefaced use of military power.
Without question, if nonentities like Boulay de la Meurthe or Danon, had
been presiding over the Five Hundred that day, Napoleon would have
been outlawed.
The financing of r8 Brumaire remains a murky issue. Prosperous
tradespeople, alienated by draconian Directory laws on tax returns,
undoubtedly subsidized the operation, and it is known that the banker
Collot advanced soo,ooo francs. Some idea of who the other big
contributors were can be gauged from the preferential contracts granted
to certain individuals once Napoleon was First Consul. But although
bankers in general were sympathetic, they waited to see how events
would turn out before committing themselves; in any case, the granting
of large scale loans required some convincing demonstration that the new
regime was legitimate and enjoyed widespread support.
Napoleon can be faulted for many things, but the idea that he
destroyed liberty by his coup of r8 Brumaire is simply absurd. As the
great French historian Vandal said: 'Bonaparte can be blamed for not
having founded liberty, he cannot be accused of having overthrown it, for
the excellent reason that he nowhere found it in being on his return to
France.' It is a supreme historical irony that the master of propaganda has
been out-propagandized on r8 Brumaire by Madame de Stael, who
claimed that Napoleon had a unique opportunity for introducing into
France perfect freedom of the 'let a hundred flowers bloom' variety.
Contemporary criticisms of Napoleon as 'undemocratic' have to be
treated with extreme caution. Madame de Stael and her circle did not
want democracy as it is understood in the twentieth century - theirs was
a demand for hegemony by an intellectual elite at best and by a cultivated
section of the bourgeoisie at worst - and even the Jacobins wanted a
'democratic dictatorship'. It is an unjustified slur on Madame de Stael to_
say that she bitterly criticized Napoleon just because he rejected her as a
woman. But of her general criticism one can only say that Napoleon was
excoriated for not granting a freedom Rousseau had not had under the
ancien regime.
After Brumaire Napoleon resorted to scheming and broken promises to
get rid of the limitations on his power which still remained. On 20
Brumaire he and Josephine left the house on the rue de la Victoire
forever; henceforth Josephine was always to be found in her dream house
marcin
(Marcin)
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